One of the Coast Guard’s greatest values to national security, and arguably the center of gravity for the service, is its unique maritime law enforcement (MLE) authority, capability, and presence. Although the service has performed the MLE mission since 1790, the Coast Guard has never fully embraced this central identity, nor has it kept up with the times. Federal and state law enforcement adopted an “intelligence-led policing model” decades ago. Although the Coast Guard has made great strides toward intelligence-led operations far off-shore, the service lacks adequate law enforcement intelligence closer to home. As a Coast Guard officer with MLE and intelligence experience both shoreside and afloat, I’ve noticed significant gaps in the service’s law enforcement (LE) efficiency and potential—which causes significant missed opportunities and frustrations in the field. If the Coast Guard adopts an intelligence-led policing model, the service would become one of the most capable tools for the national security and law enforcement communities.
Operations/Intel/Investigation Integration
The Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS) plays a critical role in human intelligence collection at the sector level. Yet only one full-time CGIS special agent is billeted to work with sector enforcement and intelligence personnel. Coast Guard sector LE and intelligence personnel could augment CGIS external investigations, helping to create an intelligence, operations, and investigative circle. However, sector LE and intel personnel would need increased systemic training on investigative techniques, processes, and source management. Further, no commissioned officers can become CGIS agents, which not only stifles integration, but also places this critical component of our fleet at a disadvantage to voice resource concerns to Coast Guard headquarters. Only a few stations, such as Station Columbia River and Station Washington, D.C., have commissioned officers as commanding officers; yet this move increased visibility of these stations’ needs, which helped acquire appropriate resources.
On-scene intelligence support is critical for understanding the individual unit needs and accessing information that only intelligence staff can provide. Yet, several sectors have few to no full-time intelligence personnel assigned. Similarly, not all boat stations across the Coast Guard have maritime enforcement (ME) specialists on their personnel allowance list, which creates significant striations of LE focus and LE capability gaps at units across the nation. Each operational unit should have at least one ME per operational unit. These existing personnel gaps, however, create not only deficiencies that counter an intel-led policing model, but also a false sense of security that there are no threats—where, in reality, there may just be no reporting on area threats. Appropriate sector intel staffing and at least one ME at every operational Coast Guard unit would add consistency and LE professionalism to each unit.
As the Coast Guard develops its cyber strategy and shifts from defense of cyberspace to enabling operations, a key element should be a focus on cyber at sectors. Specifically, full-time personnel should be added to each sector to focus on helping commands navigate social media and deep web sites, and to conduct legal open-source collection for local sector commander priorities. They would also assist CGIS with document and media exploitation, the command center with search and rescue, and the Prevention division with maritime transportation system protection and outreach. While the DOD model for training and deploying cyber personnel is appropriate for protecting the network at the national level, to enable operations at the sector level, we need to look to our law enforcement partners—because they are already integrating cyber capabilities today.
Process Improvement
Intelligence-led policing is not just about sensitive intelligence integration; it’s also about sharing and including innovative best practices for operational decision makers. Yet the only formal process for sharing innovative best practices is the (at-times random) personnel transfer. Instead, the Coast Guard should adopt (or join) organizations like the lauded Marine Corps and Army Centers for Lessons Learned. These centers analyze operational reports to identify trends, share best practices, and incorporate solutions to operational challenges. A Coast Guard Center for Lessons Learned could be comprised of members from intelligence echelons, Force Readiness Command schoolhouses, and district legal offices to directly support operational entities. This center could also become an authority to influence and expedite policy changes, training, and innovation. For example, the afloat community has systems in place to push legal developments of at-sea interdictions back to the community for a training and awareness. However, this content-sharing and coordination doesn’t exist for the fight closer to home. While several sector intelligence and enforcement divisions initiate novel practices, there is no mechanism to share these approaches horizontally across the service, beyond ad-hoc conversations.
Technology
Federal and state intelligence-led policing innovations include the sharing of sensitive intelligence, the utilization of business metrics and geospatial crime data to maximize patrol planning, and advances in real-time video feeds for decision makers. Federal and state field operators have access to automatic license plate readers, acoustic detection devices to geo-locate gun-shots, and facial recognition software. These initiatives embrace technology and intelligence as a critical enabler of effective policing and have been key drivers in reducing the national crime rate. Yet the Coast Guard has access to few of these systems, or equivalent technologies that could be applied in the maritime realm closer to shore, which hampers operational readiness.
As Commander Craig Allen argued in his August 2019 U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings article, “Connectivity Maketh the Cutter,” it is critically important to improve connectivity for our deployed ships.[1] Reliable connectivity for cutters, aircraft, boats, and command center will dramatically improve our end game. The technology exists for command centers to receive real-time video, pictures, and radar images and relay that data across response platforms—but we need reliable connectivity to make it happen. Technology exists to feed units Automatic Identification System (AIS) and Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) data over geospatial layers of closed fishing areas using a geographic information system (GIS) application, but internal restrictions and the lack of internet prevents its applicability beyond one-off fixes at select operational units. Because of the lack of connectivity and policy red-tape, as well as the lack of a designated body to consistently integrate and disseminate this information, helicopters and boats routinely go on fisheries enforcement or counter drug patrols with little more than a lookout list. The potential for the Coast Guard to do its job smarter with better intel is there, yet the lack of connectivity and inability to use non-enterprise applications at sea keeps the Coast Guard operating in the dark ages and increasingly frustrate field operators.
Boarding and inspection teams, across both Prevention and Response, also need tablet devices with approved photography applications, wi-fi, and the ability to share content with command centers, local law enforcements, and other Coast Guard units. The information within the boarding report could then be uploaded to Coast Guard databases via wi-fi, instead of manually re-entering the info into a workstation, saving the Coast Guard thousands of man-hours daily and increasing data accuracy.
The Coast Guard should also provide its boarding officers with equipment that fellow local law enforcement officers are outfitted with: handheld ruggedized tablets and/or personal digital assistants that can scan the barcodes on driver’s licenses and immediately access all wants and warrants and history in real time. This type of equipment, already in use today by local LE agencies throughout the country, also often uses fingerprints for biometric information, and can sometimes conduct facial recognition to identify subjects using false names. These technologies would help Coast Guard field operators tremendously. For years, Coast Guard boarding teams have run information from the master and crew’s identification cards, but the process is inefficient. Boarding officers relay the information—name, address, driver’s license number—via VHF encrypted radio to the cutter, which then relays the information to the command center, and then further up the chain. Sometimes communications to/from the cutter or to/from the command center are spotty, which delays receipt of information regarding outstanding wants or warrants—and prolongs the amount of time the boarding team is on board the boat. The inefficiencies within this process often influence the boarding officer’s decision to forego this check entirely.
Finally, the overt nature of operating in orange boats, which are visible for miles and stored in public view, influences the environment we are trying to monitor. While visible law-enforcement presence on the water is appropriate for deterrence and response, unmarked boats could support surveillance efforts. Our shore-based law enforcement brethren have both overt patrol cars as well as clandestine vehicles because they understand that both are needed to have full awareness of the environment. The Coast Guard should mirror such tactics in the maritime environment.[2]
Training & Policy
The Coast Guard has a significant footprint of officers assigned to DOD liaison billets and within the intelligence community, but has an extremely limited footprint within the civilian law enforcement community. Surprisingly, very few Coast Guardsmen have visibility of how the civilian LE world operates due to a lack of cross-pollination. Liaison tours to federal agencies and even large local LE agencies could provide significant value to the Coast Guard. For example, a one-year exchange to the Los Angeles Police Department or Federal Bureau of Investigations or Homeland Security Investigations field office could immediately be followed by a tour at Sector Los Angeles/Long Beach as the enforcement or intel chief or to Office of Law Enforcement Policy (CG-MLE) at headquarters. Fellowships create networks, encourage the sharing of ideas, and provide necessary Coast Guard exposure to local agencies and vice-versa.
Fellows and a Coast Guard Center for Lessons Learned could influence classroom-based training for command center personnel, which currently focuses only on search and rescue. The Coast Guard cannot follow an intelligence-led LE model if watch standers within our operational hubs have had no significant systemic LE training. Yet, sector command centers receive multi-page, acronym-heavy warrant checks from databases. Watch standers with limited or no LE training are likely unable to interpret these reports for the field operator, which can create cascading safety concerns for boarding teams.
Each accession point should also graduate personnel as boarding team members to create a common cultural understanding for the service and take the burden off receiving commands to qualify these members on-the-job. Two additional weeks of pipeline training would pay dividends: each new Coast Guardsmen would report to their first unit with an understanding of the service’s authority and jurisdiction, an appreciation for the service’s unique law-enforcement role, and a shared language.
Most professional law enforcement organizations carry weapons and badges when they are off-duty; however, Coast Guard boarding officers do not. This likely goes back to an identity disconnect between a law enforcement organization and a military organization. Allowing boarding officers to carry weapons and credentials off-duty would create a common LE culture in the service and enhance credibility. While this practice may lead to some initial abuses—as with any change—violators would be held accountable, and practices would normalize. Implementation could require at least two years of consecutive time as a boarding officer and restricting this allowance to E-5 and up. Further, as the active shooter threat continues to advance, this policy gap is a wasted opportunity that puts American citizens in danger, particularly when we have motivated, trained, and weapons capable federal law enforcement officers sitting on the sidelines in our communities naked and unarmed.
Boarding officer school should include current intelligence trends, threats, or issues developing in the field and fed data from a Center for Lessons Learned. Also, maritime enforcement specialists should be allowed to attend Coast Guard intelligence courses (such as the two-week intelligence collector course). The courses are currently limited to intelligence specialists and intelligence officers, and the missed opportunities for personnel that most routinely interact with the public negatively affects an effective operational intelligence cycle.
Finally, the skill sets of a boarding officer are different than those needed for a sector enforcement chief, the leading sector driver of LE operations. Sector enforcement chiefs need formalized law enforcement leadership training as well, which should including how to plan law enforcement missions; work with deployable specialized forces acquisition; integrate with local and federal LE partner briefs; conduct trend analysis and intelligence integration; engage with district attorneys and/or legal staff; integrate with CGIS; and conduct maritime security response planning, data management, and crisis management, among other skillsets.
Conclusion
There are Coast Guard–wide initiatives already in development to help with some of these suggestions. For example, there is a current push for enhanced use of law enforcement credentialing, expanded use of basic tablets, and limited document and media exploitation, as well as work to establish law enforcement instructor programs, a new course of fire, ideas at work innovation programs, etc. However, they are usually single-issue topics that often fall off to other competing priorities or lack a strategic link to something bigger. The goal of this article is to both applaud those efforts as a key part of our future and help push the organization to look wider and more strategically. This is as much of a list of ideas as it is a framework to view our identity and a way forward.
The Coast Guard must remember that it is not the world’s second best navy, but the world’s best Coast Guard. And while it is a military service at all times, there is a reason that the Coast Guard is in the Department of Homeland Security and not the Department of Defense. It is important to understand and appreciate these differences, and then organize, train, and equip our forces as such—both far out to sea and closer to home. Our front-line operators want better gear, technology, and training to do their jobs more efficiently. An intelligence-led policing model as the underlying framework can address current challenges and improve Coast Guard methodologies for front-line operators.[3] Fortunately, the Coast Guard has exceptional people— some of the best in the government—who attempt to overcome these challenges every day. They often succeed despite the current framework—not because of it.
[1] Craig Allen Jr., “Connectivity Maketh the Cutter,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, August 2019, Vol. 145/8/1,398, https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2019/august/connectivity-maketh-cutter.
[2] Jeff Garvey and Nicolas Schellman “Looking But Not Seeing,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, October 2014, Vol. 140/10/340.
[3] United States Coast Guard Strategic Priorities, https://www.work.uscg.mil/Strategy/.
